Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a peripheral interface for attaching a wide variety of computing devices, such as personal computers, digital telephone lines, monitors, modems, mice, printers, scanners, game controllers, keyboards, storage devices, and/or the like.
USB TYPE-C is a new standard under the USB umbrella. The USB TYPE-C connector supports power, data, and video at the same time. The TYPE-C connector supports up to 100 W of power delivery, up to 10 Gbps of USB SuperSpeed+ (SS+) data transfer and up to 8.1 Gbps of DISPLAYPORT Alternate Mode (DP Alt Mode) video. In addition to DP Alt Mode video, the TYPE-C connector supports various other DP Alt Mode video and data standards such as MHL, HDMI, and THUNDERBOLT.
The USB TYPE-C device that passes information through the USB TYPE-C connector and, specifically, the multiplexer in the USB TYPE-C device relies heavily on the Power Distribution (PD) controller to successfully perform operations. For that reason, the PD controller has to control the multiplexer through a control interface or directly through configuration pins. This type of operation imposes a hardware and software burden on the multiplexer and the PD controller. Moreover, dedicated pins need to be made available for the control interface on both the PD controller and the multiplexer, and the PD Controller needs to include the multiplexer in its firmware and other programming resources. Also, in the scenario of remote daughter cards, cables, or modules, long and cost-inefficient cabling may be required to connect the PD controller and the multiplexer.